A New Heart

I wear wires today. Five leads to monitor my heart rate and rhythm. In about 48 hours I can remove them. Then the cardiologist can look at the results to see what is going on inside me. Can he truly know?

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;   



Oh, don't I know it. 


who can understand it?

Or do I? 


Do I really know how deceitful? This striving to avail itself of every favourable circumstance to gratify its propensities to pride, ambition, evil desire, and corruption of all kinds. 


Can I really understand the extent of the sickness? 


God knows more evil of us than we do of ourselves. 

Ah well, yes, the cardiologist can look at my physical heart - the one that has been under a certain amount of strain from treatment received over 30 years ago for pediatric cancer. My physical heart; the one that has twisted somehow and does not pump just as it should.

But, he cannot heal me of my real sickness; the one that separated me from my God.  My heart wounded by sin, corrupt, depraved.

My heart is desperately sick.

The only thing that can heal me is the love of God; the blood of Jesus that flowed at the cross can heal this heart. He has given me a new heart.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

He gave me a new heart. A heart that beats with His. 

. . .  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Yes, at times I fear the days to come with this physical heart of mine, but perfect love casts our fear. 

I will wear these wires, they will monitor my heart.

But my heart will rest in the One who has formed me and who knows my inmost being and rescued me by His grace.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Calvin, in his commentary, prays,

Grant, Almighty God, that as we are wholly nothing and less than nothing, we may know our nothingness, and having cast away all confidence in the world as well as in ourselves, we may learn to flee to thee as suppliants, and so put our trust in thee for our present life and for eternal salvation, that thou alone mayest be glorified: and may we be devoted to thee through the whole course of our life, and so persevere in humility and in calling on thy name, that thou mayest not only for once bring us help, but that we may know that thou art always present with those who truly and from the heart call upon thee, until we shall at length be filled with the fullness of all those blessings, which are laid up for us in heaven by Christ our Lord — Amen.